September 2016

In our room, we have a fan providing white noise that helps us fall asleep. This also helps circulate air; I'm not a fan of a stuffy room. When it's hot in the summer, the fan cools us off by sitting in the window and bringing in the cooler night air. Right now, as we move into fall and cooler nights, the fan is on the floor just keeping up circulation.

Our previous fan died at the start of the summer. I suspect lack of vacuuming, as it had built up a lot of dust. I'm being more careful with our current fan, which we have owned for awhile but hadn't used in a few years.

With the current fan, it has worked fine for the purpose, with one little annoying quirk: it's got a slight rattle to it. You can sometimes tilt the fan in the window to minimize the rattle, but that wasn't possible on the floor. This provided "more" white noise (as in, a louder fan), but there was this annoying tick we learned to live with.

The other day, I was fed up. I examined the fan; where was the tick coming from? Could I fix it? I discovered that there's a lose metal bar in the fan. It should be attached to the body (I think to stabilize the fan), but the welding had broken. This continually vibrated and introduced the rattle. I knew I couldn't weld it . . . but could I reattach somehow?

One twist tie later and we are back in business with a blissfully working and rattle-free fan. I love low-tech solutions to small annoyances. Shout out to both my dad and miser mom: two people who have inspired me to seek the easy (and "elegant," in our own way) solution.

Happy to be enjoying a quiet night's sleep now; little things really do have such an effect on quality of life.